AI’s Impacts on the Cabling Industry

by Josh Seawell, director of product management, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave

Last week, The New York Times reported on AI infrastructure investments, citing their impacts on the stock market and the entire U.S. economy. I highly recommend this article, titled “The A.I. Spending Frenzy Is Propping Up the Real Economy, Too.” Reading it took me back to a webinar I recently recorded with Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine.

In the webinar, I contextualized the AI boom within the history of the telecom industry and projected the road ahead. My brief reflections on some of the webinar topics follow.

One Thing Leads to Another

In my 30 plus years with Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, the telecom industry has faced one market mover after another, collectively working hard on preparing networks to enable emerging technologies. Whether it was broadband, high-speed internet, FTTH, IoT, 5G, cloud services, and now AI, the question during each bandwidth explosion has always been “where is this going to take us?” Or “what happens next?”

Time and again, what I have seen is evolution. Technologies build on each other. With each advancement, people and businesses seize on the applications and enhanced services that add the greatest value – whether it’s making them more efficient or offering more feature-rich experiences – then those technologies trigger the next wave of innovation and investment.

I have no doubt that artificial intelligence and machine learning are significant advancements that promise to generate more enhanced capabilities. In turn, these next-gen applications will continue to challenge network operators to stay ahead of bandwidth demands.

Call It What You Want

Boom. Bubble. Blip. Industry chatter on the topic of AI swings from optimistic to doom and gloom. “Is This an A.I. Bubble” asked a recent episode of the Hard Fork podcast. It is a fair question given the unprecedented spike in spending and lack of clarity on how pervasive AI will ultimately become in how we live, work, and play in the near future.

Also unclear is how today’s spending will pay off for the field of investors racing to “win” AI. Seeing how this moment plays out will keep our jobs interesting for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, my optimism stems from knowing that today’s network projects will enable what’s next, even if there is not yet a crystal-clear consensus on how that will look.

Or, as the The New York Times article put it: even if A.I. use doesn’t live up to the hype, the internet is expanding quickly. The flood of data center capacity in the pipeline is still likely to be absorbed, even if more slowly than it is now. Vacancy in leased data centers — that is, those that aren’t owned by their users — is currently close to zero.

Under Pressure

The pressure on fiber optic cable and connectivity manufacturers is twofold. To stay ahead of industry demand for high-performance, extremely-high-density products, leading-edge suppliers first need to innovate products that are designed to make the most of AI-factory investments. Then they need to bring the products’ manufacturing capacity online fast enough to keep up with aggressive, competing project timelines.                                                               

It seems like a lifetime ago, but Sumitomo Electric Lightwave launched its version of intermittently bonded ribbon (IBR) cable in 2017. Manufactured under the name Freeform Ribbon™ cable and often described as pliable ribbon cable, the product was designed to help high-fiber-count data center customers install more fibers in their valuable, limited duct space.

If optimizing a facility’s real estate was a priority nearly 10 years ago, smaller and denser solutions are now the gold standard for data centers. Remember, today’s AI infrastructure requires high-speed, low-latency computing clusters to enable massive data transfers. This requirement adds up to 5-10x more fiber connections than network operators have ever needed before.

Getting Better All the Time

Industry wide, telecom manufacturers are increasing capacity to boost production and reduce lead times for their highest-density, smallest-form-factor products. At the same time, they are making their own investments into research and development.

On the near horizon, reduced outside diameter (OD) cabling solutions will be made possible by even smaller optical fibers than the 200µm versions in the latest IBR cables. Customers’ AI-ready connectivity options will include very-small-form-factor (VSFF) MMC and MDC connectors from US Conec as well as 3M™ Expanded Beam Optical (EBO) interconnect technology. Multicore fiber (MCF) and hollow core technologies will be integrated into low-loss factory-terminated, and eventually field-terminated, solutions for mind-blowing fiber count increases.

The bottom line is that network evolution is always in progress, but we are living in an age of accelerating adoption and innovation. This AI boom is a moment, but it is a transformative one that will lead to the development of future technologies. It is an exciting time, especially as a member of the telecom industry whose work is making network evolution possible.

About the author: Josh Seawell, director of product management, oversees the development and distribution of Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s optical fiber and connectivity portfolio in North America and CALA. Josh’s webinar was sponsored by Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, moderated by Patrick McLaughlin, Chief Editor Cabling Installation & Maintenance, recorded on July 31, 2025, and is available on demand at https://app.webinar.net/AaYRZ40ZGvQ. Watch until the end to access a short quiz for continuing education credits.